Now that the digital revolution is well underway, is it only a matter of time before printed works become obsolete?

There are e-books now, electronic versions of many titles you’d normally buy at your friendly neighborhood bookstore, but designed to be used in conjunction with an e-book reader or a PDA. These e-books haven’t really taken off, at least not yet, but they have advantages including easy searching for a particular text string and digital bookmarking.

And of course most newspapers and magazines now offer online versions of their publications that you can surf either for free or for a price.

Even reference books are going digital. You can surf online encyclopedias, dictionaries and thesauri, and if you’re tasked with writing something for the boss - or if you’re the boss and don’t want anyone to know you can’t spell - you can even buy digital versions of some well-known and respected dictionaries from Random House. And while these particular beasts require installation onto your computer rather than just being available online, they’re really quite nifty.

I’ve been trying the digital versions of both Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary and Webster’s College Dictionary and was so impressed with how these things work I had to tell you about them.

Available from wordgenius.com, either for download or CD-ROM purchase, once you’ve installed the dictionary onto your PC a little icon called a drag-on (not to be confused with a fire breathing dragon) places itself on your Windows desktop. And this is where it gets slick.